She said the constant conversation and money spent on child care is a “constant point of conflict,” even though she and her husband have high salaries.
“We’ve always been really thoughtful about planning for the future and saving, and we are not able to do that right now,” Gibbins-Burdette said. “Sometimes, it feels as if we’re living paycheck to paycheck.”
She added, “It’s become probably the number one stressor in our lives right now.”
Gibbins-Burdette is not alone. Child care is statistically one of the highest expenses for young families in the state.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
And despite advocacy to increase the amount of money given to child care, centers say the increased amount of service they are now required to provide to collect state payments have pushed some to consider closing.
Our investigation found:
- Child care is key in allowing parents to work, and a quality program helps young children get ready for kindergarten and sets them up for later education success. But the average cost of child care was nearly a third of the median Ohio salary of about $67,000 in 2023, according to Groundwork Ohio.
- There is currently more demand for child care than slots open in the state, particularly for infants, requiring many to get on a waitlist for child care as soon as they get pregnant or to leave the workforce entirely to take care of children.
- Despite multiple proposals from Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine in the state budget, legislation using public funds to help additional low- to mid-income families with child care using public assistance has not passed.
- Ohio is facing a child care “fiscal cliff” where the money for child care the state saved up under previous Governor Jon Kasich is almost gone. Child care advocates say the state will either need to provide more funding or cut who is eligible.
- Child care providers have, for a long time, had very small profit margins and low pay for workers, but new regulations have cut the amount of money the state reimburses to providers and led some to consider closing. This problem could further drive up the costs of child care and make it more difficult to access for families.
Helping families
Under current state law, families qualify for publicly funded child care if they make up to 145% of the federal poverty level, or $3,120 per month according to the Ohio Department of Children and Youth.
The cutoff is 150% if the child has a disability. To qualify, parents or guardians need to be working, applying for jobs or going to school.
Policy Matters Ohio, a liberal think tank, found Ohio has the third-lowest income limit for publicly funded child care in the country for kids ages zero to five as of 2025. Previously, Ohio was in last place.
Michigan, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania provide publicly funded childcare at or above 200% of the poverty limit, or $53,300 for a family of three, according to Policy Matters.
Ohio’s high income limit means many working families struggling to get by don’t qualify for state aid, says Lynanne Gutierrez, CEO of Groundwork Ohio.
“Even with two earners and one child, two earners making minimum wage, you still wouldn’t be eligible for the subsidy,” she said.
| Family Size | Monthly income at 145% of federal poverty line | Monthly income at 200% of the federal poverty line |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | $2,470.00 | $3,407.00 |
| 3 | $3,120.00 | $4,304.00 |
| 4 | $3,770.00 | $5,200.00 |
| 5 | $4,421.00 | $6,097.00 |
| Source: Ohio Department of Children and Youth |
A database from the U.S. Department of Labor indicates Montgomery County families paid between 10% and 19% of their incomes for child care in 2022, depending on the age of the child and if that care was done in a home or in a center.
Infant care is the most expensive — $15,340 for a center and $10,400 for in-home care per year — while older children are less expensive. This is because a higher ratio of adults needs to watch infants for babies to be safe.
Families whose income is between 146% and 200% of the federal poverty level may qualify for the state’s Child Care Choice vouchers, a pilot program affecting about 12,000 families this year.
That program covers a portion of the cost of child care on a sliding scale based on household income. Participating providers can charge families up to 9% of their monthly income.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
“For example, a family of three with a gross monthly income of $3,005 per month, should pay no more than a total payment of $270.45 per month,” according to the state’s website.
Families making under 200% of the poverty line may also qualify for the state’s Early Childhood Education grant, specifically for preschool.
Political debate
Expanding access to affordable child care has bipartisan support. For many Republicans, it’s a workforce issue.
The Ohio Chamber of Commerce released a study last year that estimates the financial impact of insufficient child care coverage at $5.4 billion in lost economic activity to the state each year. This is largely because parents miss work or can’t work because of the lack of adequate child care, the Chamber says.
“Ohio is growing every day,” said Ohio Chamber President and CEO Steve Stivers. “We keep bringing in new projects and job opportunities, but we’re not keeping up on creating new child care options for the people we’re attracting — or even the families we already have here. We’re leaving a lot on the table if we don’t properly address that challenge.”
Ohio’s current Republican governor has referenced children and child care multiple times during his State of the State addresses since 2022 and called for more affordable child care.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
“Many Ohio parents must choose between taking on full-time, full-year work or staying unemployed or underemployed, because they cannot afford the high cost of child care,” DeWine said in 2023. “Through our budget, 15,000 more Ohio children in working families will have access to high-quality child care — child care that will help them start kindergarten with the skills needed to succeed.”
DeWine previously pushed to raise the eligibility limit for publicly funded child care to 160% of the federal poverty line, but that proposal did not make it through the legislature.
This year, the governor is proposing a tax credit of 5% of a taxpayer’s income for having children in the home under age six, with the limit set at $1,000 per child. Married joint filers would be eligible for some portion if their income does not exceed $94,000, and single filers have a limit of $69,000.
Credit: Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch
Credit: Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch
Republican Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, in response to questions from this news outlet, agreed that there’s bipartisan support for publicly funded child care. He believes the biggest obstacle to affordable child care is “over regulation by the government” that has driven up the cost of child care for both families and the state. For example, Ohio ties facility funding to learning and development standards.
“What most people want is a place for their child to go that’s safe, that’s healthy, and when we begin introducing additional items that sound great but are extraordinarily expensive, we then have what we always have when things are more expensive: We have less of it and less opportunity for people to take advantage of it,” he said.
Parents continue to struggle
The child care debate isn’t new, but it has been intensifying.
Between 2017 to 2023, the number of child care workers in Ohio dropped by nearly 32%, said Policy Matters Ohio. The biggest decrease in workers happened between 2019 and 2020, as the pandemic closed several child care centers.
Child care costs have gone up, too. The cost of center-based care increased 23% between 2021 and 2023, according to Groundwork Ohio. In 2020-2021, the cost of child care was around 27% of Ohio’s median household income for two children, but that amount rose to 29% in 2022-2023.
“Parents are just stretched so thin,” said Gutierrez, noting that other costs — food, electricity, health care and rent — have also risen in the same time frame.
She said she thinks DeWine had a vision to help, but the legislature did not deliver. Child care centers and private sector businesses allowing employees to be flexible are doing the best they can, but they still need help, she said.
“At some point, the pressure is going to be so much that we have to act on it,” Gutierrez said.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
For the Burdette family, child care continues to be a problem. Gibbins-Burdette considered quitting her job entirely to care for her two children full-time but worries that leaving the workforce would leave her behind in both career and retirement.
Gibbins-Burdette said she wants to see some kind of assistance for families like hers, whether it’s caregiver credits for people who step out of the workforce to take care of children or aging parents, or child care subsidies for care centers, which she said would help stabilize the child care workforce too.
“I think that would make people feel more comfortable in those jobs,” she said. “There’d be lower turnover, we’d get better care.”
But the cost of child care has affected her entire life. She and her husband planned to buy a larger house and would like to have another kid but feel neither is financially feasible.
“It is changing our family plan. It’s changing our life plans. It changed my career plans,” Gibbins-Burdette said. ”We are building our life around child care.”
Staff Writer Avery Kreemer contributed to this report.
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